Diana Christmas Read online

  Suddenly, totally unexpectedly, tears filled her eyes. An intense sadness came over her. It happened almost faster than I could blink. All her vibrancy and spark and flirtatiousness crumpled down as if crushed from above by a heavy boot.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, my arms moving quickly around her to comfort her. “This morning has been so heady, I’m overstepping my bounds. I’ll let you decide what you want to talk about. If there’s stuff that’s off-limits then that’s fine, I can write around it.”

  She took one long sob, which shuddered down the whole length of her body, then she brushed her forearm across her eyes. “No, no. It’s okay, Michael. I want to talk about it.” She nestled into me. “The reason I quit is that a man named Carlisle Collins did a terrible thing to me, the worst thing that has ever happened to me.”

  I’d done my year’s training as a journalist, and so my instinct was to automatically ask her what, but I held myself back. She was hurting, and I couldn’t bear to see her hurting.

  “He did such a dreadful thing to me,” she continued, “and it drove me out of the business. It killed my confidence, slaughtered my career, left it in mangled pieces. But more than that, Michael, the repercussions of it went on right through my marriage, and now into my widowhood too. It’s been so terrible, Michael. It’s been so, so terrible.”

  She sobbed long and angrily in my arms. When I’d met her earlier that morning, she had been vivacious, sexy, giggly. Now it seemed like whatever had broken her once was breaking her all over again.

  “I’m so sorry.” It was all I could think of to say. “If there’s anything I can to do to help, you just have to ask.”

  She raised her head and her eyes were so alive, burning with anger and hope.

  “You can help me, Michael. I’ll tell you all about it. Not for the magazine, but just for you and me. I’ll tell you all about it and then you can help me find Carlisle Collins and make him stop. Will you do that for me? Please – will you do that for me?”

  “Of course I will, Diana. Anything!”

  She wrapped her arms tight around me, buried her head in my chest and sobbed again.

  I’d never meant a promise more desperately than the one I made right then.

  Chapter Three

  “Carlisle Clark was one of those men who used to hang around studios and had – I don’t know how to describe it – somewhat ill-defined roles.” She was sitting at the edge of the bed now, another dressing gown wrapped around her. This one was thicker and more demure, even with the still obvious nakedness underneath. A silver cigarette case had appeared. She’d offered me one, but I didn’t smoke and thought that an attempt to look tough and manly would just end with a coughing fit. Her hand waved the cigarette through the air for emphasis, but otherwise she inhaled exactly as I’d have wanted her to: like a living goddess of the silver screen. Coolly and effortlessly sucking down every puff and exhaling with an almost sexual satisfaction.

  “When you arrive for your first day at Pinewood or Shepperton, Michael, everyone there seems to belong more than you do. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been on the stage, or even if you’ve made films before; you’re still an imposter and you’re waiting for someone else to spot it. So when you first meet them, you assume that guys like Carlisle have a proper reason to be there. That they have defined roles in the business. You know, that they’re sound technicians, or camera operators, or grips. But no, really they’re not any of these things. They’re the fixers.

  “It’s a strange and difficult place, the movie set. A lot of temperamental people. A lot of conflicting needs and wants and desires. It’s a powder keg, Michael, one that could detonate at any second. And frequently there are ructions. So it pays for the suits in the back office to have some people on the set who are able to get things done. Who are there to meet the seemingly impossible demands, so that everything can keep going the way it should.

  “Carlisle was fixer. Of all the fixers I ever knew, he was the one who really stood out. He was well over six feet tall, and he was half African and half Cockney. His dad had been born in Nigeria or somewhere and had stowed away on a boat in the thirties. Something terribly romantic like that. His heritage meant that Carlisle always made an impression, no matter where he was. Not only was he so tall, but his skin was almost tan in colour. You know, like a suit or a suitcase. But more than that, he was a man you noticed because he was so fine-looking. Chiselled and handsome. He had a face that would have made him a proper movie star if he’d been a different ethnicity, and a body that definitely put to shame some of the pudgy leading men I had to work with.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Michael. I actually quite like jealousy. I liked it that my husband didn’t want me to flirt with other men. But I won’t take it from someone I only met this morning. Even if I have let you seduce me.” She giggled, somewhere between sweetly and knowingly. “Fine – if we’re being honest, Carlisle and I did have a little tumble, but it was just kissing and touching and nothing more. We were both terribly squiffy, I’m afraid. Actually I think he may have been taking some other substances too. But nothing else happened and the moment passed. Besides, he was my friend, or I thought he was my friend.

  “One night there was a big party at Sid Washeen’s house. Do you know Sid? He was a Hungarian originally, I think. A film producer. He made The Utmost Pioneers for Gaumont.”

  “I’ve seen it,” I told her, “but I don’t recognise his name.”

  “He was only in London for a season. He made most of his films in France or Germany. International co-productions. I don’t know how successful they really were, but Sid was absolutely loaded. Nazi gold, some of the uncharitable said, but when he was here no one really cared in the slightest where the money came from. He was here because he wanted to break into the British film industry, and so he was desperate to know everyone. And because he was rich and liked to throw lavish parties, everyone wanted to know him too.

  “One summer he rented this enormous mansion down in Windsor. A bourgeois place. I think I read that it’s an upmarket hotel now. He hired a fleet of chauffeurs in Rolls-Royces to ferry us all down there. There were dancing girls, ice sculptures of mythical creatures all over the lawn, silver service waiters at every corner. He’d hired a swing band, and Gloria Trennan herself was the singer. It must have cost him a damn fortune, and since the only film he ever made in this country didn’t earn a single penny, I do wonder if he thought it was worth it.

  “Anyway, at this particular party, everyone was there – stars and up-and-comers alike. I can remember Stanley Baker, Bob Monkhouse, Tommy Steele, Diana Dors of course, Janette Scott, Eden St. Michel – this was before the scandal, obviously – Ian Carmichael, Raymond Wilder, Peggy Cummins, Sid James, Peter Sellers, Olivier. It was a sparkling gathering of people, the full array. If you weren’t invited to that party, then you didn’t even have a toenail in the business.”

  Her face seemed to fill with joy at the memory, before sinking again almost immediately.

  “Carlisle was there. Of course he was. He was a fixture at the studios, so he’d have known absolutely everyone on the guest list. I can remember noticing him across the ballroom. All the guests dressed to the nines, looking so glamourous, silver balloons hanging from the ceiling, and there at the centre – like he was untouched by it all – was Carlisle. A head taller than anyone else, wearing a crumpled cream suit, and glad-handing with everyone who came near. There was no formality with Carlisle. He was the kind of man you could just speak to. The kind of man everyone thought was their friend, and everyone secretly envied.

  “Gradually – I could actually see him doing it, the intent in his eyes – he made his way across the ballroom towards me. There was a lot of small talk with others along the way, maybe even some flirting with a girl or two, but it was clear where his destination was, who his destination was. It wasn’t long after our encounter, and I can remember how flattered I felt. It was thrilling to have him in front of me again. God, he was sweet! H
is head bowed slightly, he kept his eyes locked on mine as we talked, he touched my arm, told me how beautiful I was. Yes, he was my friend, but sometimes friendship leads to other things and I think that night I’d have let it. If what he wanted was as simple as that, I think I’d have gone with it. I’d have been happy to.

  “He kept me well supplied with drinks: mint juleps that he made himself at the bar each time. Barely had I got to the last sip of one, before I had another in my hand again. It was a damn conveyer belt! Now, normally I could handle my booze. My older sister always said that I had hollow legs and she was perfectly correct, if a little jealous. But that night, it was different. I seemed to let myself down. That night it didn’t take me long to get woozy, and I mean really woozy. I didn’t know what I was saying, didn’t know what I was doing. The whole world seemed like a too-bright fuzz. And in the midst of all that, Carlisle took my elbow and led me stumbling upstairs to one of the bedrooms.”

  She hesitated, her eyes darting quickly from side to side as if she was checking for eavesdroppers.

  “Have you ever heard of Sylvia Van Burlow?” she asked.

  I nodded. Sylvia Van Burlow was a Dutch actress and for a while, a contract player at Rank. With her large breasts and primped blonde hair, she’d been billed as the British film industry’s response to the French sex kittens. But on screen she didn’t have a fraction of the charisma of Bardot, nor the comic ability of someone like Diana. As a result, despite grabbing lots of salivating headlines when she first appeared, she didn’t even get close to making a real name for herself.

  “When Carlisle took me into the bedroom – not the master bedroom, I don’t think, but still huge – Sylvia was already there. She was drunk like I was. But it was more than drunk, I realised later. She was drugged like I was. Her hair was all tousled and her breasts were pretty much spilling out of the sparkling white dress she’d been wearing.

  “Carlisle plopped me next to her on the bed, grabbed my arm and put it around Sylvia. Then he did the same with her arm. After that – oh, I don’t really know how to put this – he had us do things to each other.” A shudder of shame ran through the whole length of her. “I can only remember flashes of it, barely anything at all. I have the memory of how soft she was, but I can also recall that when I touched her she was actually shivering. I don’t know if it was with the cold, or if she knew as well how wrong it all was. But what I cling onto most is Carlisle Collins’ voice, and how – when he told me I had to do something in particular to Sylvia – I listened and did it without doubt or hesitation. It was like I wasn’t myself. Like I was a marionette controlled by strings. It was horrible, Michael, it was like I had absolutely no self-will at all.

  “If you loaded Timmy’s old service revolver and put it to my forehead, I couldn’t tell you exactly what we did. Or even how long we were in there. I don’t even remember it ending. The next thing I recall – properly recall – I was on the back seat of a Rolls at the crack of dawn, on the way back to London. Horribly conscious that someone else had dressed me, that my dress, which was a beautiful Chanel gown, was all skew-whiff from my hips upwards. Horribly conscious to the point of feeling sick that when they’d dressed me – whoever it was, Carlisle Collins or someone else – they’d neglected to put on my underwear.

  “The next morning I told myself it was a bad dream, that I’d imagined it. Of course, I knew I hadn’t, and I made a definite resolution right then to avoid Carlisle Collins forevermore. I even thought of avoiding Sylvia. Not that I really knew her or we saw each other that often, but I’d just be too embarrassed to see her again. Certainly, whatever I’d done – whatever they’d made me do – was in the past. That’s the way I thought of it almost immediately. I was going to move on, and try my best to never think about it again.

  “But a few days later, the first stills arrived.” A sob burst up, shaking her whole body. “They were so sordid, Michael. So utterly, dreadfully sordid. Sylvia and I both naked, her on top of me and me on top of her. The two of us kissing and touching, doing things that should only be left to the imagination. It was all so vulgar, all so undeniable.

  “A few days later, a reel of film arrived. It wasn’t the whole thing, according to the note that came with it, but it was her screwing me and me screwing her. All silent, so that no one could hear how Carlisle Collins had orchestrated the whole thing.

  “With that reel was a demand for two thousand pounds. If it wasn’t paid, the whole terrible thing would be sent to The News of the World. They wouldn’t have been able to publish the images back then, of course, but the insinuations they could have made, the descriptions they could have given… The note also said it would be sent to every studio head in London. It would be my name swilled through the mud.”

  Her head fell into her hands and she gasped and cried and almost screamed. The hurt and rage were still so raw. I reached across the silk sheets, wanting to hold her and comfort her, but she pulled back, not wanting to be touched, too desperately fragile for that.

  “I couldn’t cope, Michael, I just couldn’t cope.” Her eyes as she stared back up at me were so red-rimmed, it was like they were burning. “I broke down, just fell apart. There was no way I could work; I couldn’t bear the thought of a camera on me. Fortunately Timmy arrived as my knight in shining armour and rescued me, sorted it out. He paid the blackmailers off and scooped me up. But it was something that hung over us right the way through our marriage. You see, one payment was never going to be enough for these people. Particularly as I now had a husband who was quite wealthy. More demands came. Right across the years. Fortunately, Timmy was such a hero that he always dealt with them, and did it without complaining. He was the best thing ever to happen to me, Michael, an absolute saint.”

  She lowered her head again and wept for a whole minute, the sleeves of her grey dressing-gown held up to her eyes.

  I didn’t know what to do. My heart ached as I stared at her, desperate to alleviate her hurt just a little.

  Diana’s jaw still trembled a little when she gazed back up at me. The sniff she gave was polite and feminine, but it temporarily stopped the tears.

  “Timmy is gone now, Michael. He’s gone and yet the demands are coming again. They’re threatening to release that disgusting film. They’re going to release it for nothing more than the simple pleasure of destroying me. That’s what they’re going to do, and they want twenty thousand pounds to stop it. Twenty thousand pounds! I don’t have that kind of money. I’ve no idea how to even get that kind of money. But I have to get hold of that film, Michael. I have to get hold of it for my own peace of mind, for my own mental wellbeing. I have to make this stop. Make all of this stop.”

  The saltwater flooded out again and her hands, shrouded in the sleeves, covered her whole face. The few extra words she said were inaudible. Again I reached out for her, more tentatively this time. Gently I held my hand against her hip, feeling the pain shake through her body.

  She stared over at me suddenly, her eyes afire with deep, unimaginable hurt. “Will you help me, Michael? Will you? Can you go to Carlisle Collins and, after all these years, put a stop to this? Can you do that for me? Please.”

  I leant across the bed and now she came eagerly into my arms, collapsed totally into them.

  “Of course I will, Diana,” I whispered. “Absolutely!”

  Chapter Four

  7th December, 1979

  London was still pretty much a mystery to me. I’d arrived nine months earlier after a childhood spent in a small village in Gloucestershire, three years at Newcastle University and then a year doing an apprenticeship at The Nottingham Courier. None of my friends, none of my acquaintances really, had made the leap to London. So I was here all on my own, very conscious that I wasn’t really making the most of it. I’d managed to rent a small room in Stoke Newington and I had my job at St Christopher’s Place. They were my worlds so far and I knew precious little beyond them.

  Bermondsey I’d never been to. Never even consider
ed it. When I got off the 199 bus onto what the conductor said was Southwark Park Road, the unfamiliarity of it was suddenly terrifying. Perhaps if I’d been one of those people who arrived in the capital with friends in every corner, I’d have had a clearer idea what I was doing. I wouldn’t have stepped off the bus feeling so unprepared, so tremblingly unsure of every step.

  I tried to pretend it was just the cold, which was indeed biting, but I was shivering from my toes upwards. In the pocket of my parka was a small map, which I’d done my best to imprint on my memory. I really hoped I’d succeeded, as there was no way I was going to let myself be seen checking it now.

  In Timmy Williams’ papers there was an address for Carlisle Collins. That surprised me: from films I’d seen and paperbacks I’d read, I thought that blackmailers tended to set up drop-off points. That the average pay-off involved a large degree of subterfuge and misdirection. Certainly it seemed barely conceivable that the blackmailer would just hand out his home address, making himself so vulnerable and open. But then such was Timmy Williams’ apparent willingness to cough up – he paid without question or argument every single time, according to Diana – that no doubt this particular blackmailer had slipped into complacency.

  Diana and I had spent the whole of Thursday together. She’d made me call the office and say that Ms Diana Christmas thought it best if I stayed for lunch and maybe some coffee afterwards, that the resulting piece would turn out better that way. The heating was on high the whole day, the passion burning between us, and neither of us bothered with clothes. I explored her body, willingly and eagerly – sometimes too eagerly. She explored mine, which was the most incredible thing, as if she somehow found me as desirable as I found her.

  Reclining on the pillows, she told me that she looked at that scrawled address at least twice a day. That she wanted to go there herself, but was frightened to. She could remember what Carlisle Collins was like, how big and strong he was. It was impossible for her to just show up there, it would be too terrifying. Her eyes gazed into mine pleadingly. It didn’t matter if I wasn’t as big as he was; I was a man and he’d always treat a man differently to how he’d treat a woman. Particularly if the woman was Diana. I was younger than he was, she told me, and I was bound to be healthier, given how much he smoked and drank.